Photo: Credit NEPTUNE Canada

I’m back in Boston, and podcasting from The World newsroom this week. We have two stories, both about international collaborations to understand the world’s oceans. One involves a robot called Wally (named after the 2008 Pixar movie Wall-E) that resides deep in the Pacific Ocean. The other involves a space project that aims to better understand Earth’s salty oceans. Also, my colleague Clark Boyd has launched a new Science Forum about the search for alien life. Click here to join the conversation.

Wally—A Deep Sea Crawler: It looks like Wall-E, the robot in the 2008 Pixar movie of the same name. But unlike Wall-E, Wally resides in the deep ocean, and is helping scientists explore deep parts of the Pacific Ocean. Wally is the creation of Laurenz Thomsen, a marine scientist at Germany’s Jacobs University Bremen. Thomsen can control Wally through the internet, and is using it to explore methane hydrates in the Pacific Ocean. These hydrates are rich sources of methane and there’s growing interest in understanding these hydrates as potential future sources of natural gas. There’s also fear that with increasing ocean temperatures, these hydrates may release more methane, a potent natural gas.

Wally is part of a new network of cabled deep ocean observatories called NEPTUNE Canada.
Check out the cabled network of observatories off the coast of Vancouver Island in this video.

Argentine Space Mission: The U.S. and Argentina are collaborating on a new space project. It’s called Aquarius, and it is aimed at understanding the salinity of our planet’s oceans. The data will help scientists understand variations in the water cycle, which in turn would help understanding of global changes in climate.
See this video to learn more about Aquarius.

HIV Treatment as HIV Prevention: This was the biggest and most hopeful AIDS news in some time. Check out our interview on what the new study results could mean for Africa. And here’s a story we ran last year, from South Africa, that also explores the strategy of treating HIV to prevent the virus’s spread.

Obama’s Global Health Initiative: Early in his presidency, Barack Obama announced a new Global Health Initiative to combat disease in the developing world. Two years later, the effort appears disorganized, ill-defined, and lacking clear progress, according to this in-depth and welcome investigation by reporter John Donnelly for GlobalPost.

Conflict in Cote d’Ivoire Disrupts Polio Eradication Drive: Yet more bad news from a country in turmoil. Read this news report from IRIN, the UN’s source of humanitarian news.

WHO Considers Fate of Smallpox: And you thought that smallpox had been eradicated. Not quite. Nature looks at the debate over what to do with stored virus samples.

Angela Merkel Champions Green Energy: An unexpected political turn by the German chancellor is cheered by environmentalists. Read this fascinating story by Christian Schwägerl at Yale Environment 360.

UK Fungi Redraw Evolutionary Tree: It’s amazing how much work taxonomists have yet to do. As reported in Nature, a discovery in a British pond could upset scientists’ understanding of fungal evolution.

Bedbugs and Drug-resistant Bacteria: Two of my least favorite things team up against us. As reported by AP.

Ambassador for Clean Cookstoves: In case you were wondering why Julia Roberts graces this week-in-review post, the Hollywood star has been named global ambassador by the Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, according to this U.S. State Department news release. Why appoint an Academy Award-winning actress to teach about the dangers of dirty cook stoves in the developing world? Because stars draw media attention, of course. and in my case the ploy worked! Her appointment also gives me an excuse to point you to Rhitu Chatterjee’s excellent story last year about efforts to clean up cook stoves in India. (The story was also featured on Science Podcast #80.)

Enjoy the weekend!

David Baron is the health & science editor at The World.

(Photo: flickr image by David Shankbone.)

This is Malte Spitz, German Green Party politician and cell phone user. Super user, actually. Recently, he started wondering just how much data his cell phone company had on him. So, he asked for it. And under German Constitutional Law, the company had to fork it over. Spitz then took the data, all six months of it, and it available to the German newspaper “Die Zeit,” which took it and made an intriguing, some might say frightening, visualization of it. Not hard, considering Spitz cell phone was registered and logged by a local cell phone tower no fewer than 35,000 times in that six month period. In this episode of The World’s Technology Podcast, we’ll feature an interview with Spitz, and find out why he asked for his information, and what he intends to do now. You can read, and hear, a longer interview with Malte Spitz over at Deutsche Welle‘s Spectrum program.

Also on this program, we’ll do a survey of how countries that currently use nuclear power, and those that had plans to, are feeling in the wake of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan. It all raises the question of risk assessment, not just with nuclear power, but with all the things that we might have cause to fear in our lives. To give us some perspective, we’ve got an interview with Dan Gardner, author of Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear.

Haven’t you always wanted to take a peak inside Virgin Galactic’s commercial spacecraft? I know I do. Luckily, the BBC was granted access to get inside the craft, and we’ll have the report. If you’ve got $200,000 to spare, it just might be a sweet, if short, ride.

And here’s a question: how would you like to help the FBI solve a cold case? Well, you might have to know a bit about cryptography, or not. No one’s really sure if the scraps of paper left behind at a 1999 crime scene are encrypted clues, or just gibberish. So, they’ve made the notes available online, and are asking for the public’s help.

Finally, we pay tribute to a giant of stickiness, Harry Coover. Coover worked with cyanoacrylates, and that work eventually gave rise to the product we all know and love (and hate), Super Glue. Coover passed away this week at the age of 94. He had more than 400 patents, and was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2010.

Remember, you can always join the fun on our Facebook fan page, or follow us on Twitter.

(Photo: German Green Party)

This week: It’s the 100th episode of The World Science Podcast!  We re-trace our steps since the beginning of the podcast and give you updates on stories we’ve covered before. You’ll hear about click languages, champagne bubbles and how the blind can see with sound. We’ll also give you a podcast-exclusive preview of stories to come later this year.  And don’t forget to stop by our online conversation about magic and the human mind with Macknik and Martinez-Conde in our  Science Forum.

Updates on Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• Click Languages: In July, 2009, we brought you a story about an endangered click language from Africa. Elsa caught up with researcher Amanda Miller for an update. She has now documented a new kind of click, called a retroflex click, in a dialect of the !Xung language. It’s the most difficult click to execute, and is made by touching the bottom of the tongue to the roof of the mouth. Miller and her colleagues believe it is also the most ancestral click, which has morphed into other clicks in different dialects.
  Listen to the old story in Podcast no. 24.
  Amanda Miller’s website.
  Video tutorial for pronouncing the clicks in Khoekhoegowab, another click language.
• Champagne Bubbles: In podcasts 34 and 80, we brought you news about champagne bubbles and how best to pour your champagne so you don’t ruin the drink’s flavor. Elsa checked in with the authors of the studies and learned that they are now studying what happens to champagne as it ages.
  Listen to the original stories in podcasts 34 and 80.
  More on champagne bubbles in American Scientist.
  The researchers’ website (in French).
  The study on aged champagne.
  A champagne experiment in The World newsroom. Check out the results in this video!
  
• You Can’t Get Drunk Through Your Feet: Physicians in Denmark have disproved the Danish urban myth that you can get drunk by soaking your feet in a tub of vodka. The doctors tested the folklore by sticking their own feet in a bowl of “very cheap vodka,” says study author Peter Lommer Kristensen. And the British Medical Journal published their results in their Christmas 2010 issue.
  The study.
• Seeing With Sound: With a software program that converts images to sounds, blind people can navigate and even “see.” After just several hours of training, their brains begin to send the information from their ears to the visual cortex for interpretation.
  Listen to the original story in podcast 81.
  The inventor’s website. (To make and hear your own line drawings, click on the “demo” button at the very bottom of the page.)
  See and hear the rest of the walk around the yard.
  Check this NPR story for a completely different reason to convert information into sounds.
• Scary Sex for Water Striders: When it’s time to mate, some male water striders climb on top of the females and start tapping the surface of the water. This behavior attracts predators from below–the threat of which intimidates females into mating more quickly to stop the tapping.
  Listen to the original story in podcast 80.
  The study.
  Some crickets have taken the opposite route: The risk of being eaten has made males completely mute.
  More on how predators affect mating signals in other animals (a weighty pdf from the Quarterly Review of Biology).

Strawberry and Cacao Genomes Sequenced: Scientists have just sequenced the genomes of the cacao and strawberry plants. The World’s science and health editor David Baron tells us how the sequences could help scientists, crop breeders and farmers.
Guest: David Baron

At right is Hossein Derakhshan, also known by his online name, Hoder. According to sources inside Iran, Hoder might very well be facing the death penalty. He was arrested in Tehran back in November of 2008. The charges, according to Iranian radio, were “cooperation with enemy states, propaganda against the Islamic regime, promoting anti-Revolutionary groups, insulting sanctities, launching and managing vulgar and obscene sites.”

Hoder’s trial finished over the summer. We’ve gotten reports this week that the prosecutor has asked for the death penalty. Here at WTP, we’ve followed Hoder’s story from just about the beginning. He’s widely credited with being the person who created that tools that make it possible to blog in the Persian language. When I first talked to him, he was living in Canada and was convinced that blogging could help undermine the Iranian regime. He became a Canadian citizen. At some point, though, the tone of his writing changed, and he actually became a supporter of Iran. Then, he decided to return to the country. Curt Hopkins at Read Write Web has a good write-up on Hoder’s back-story. Learn more in this week’s podcast.

Also in this episode, we have an update on Google’s woes with Street View in Germany, and we’ll also hear about some whales that are getting high-tech help in the Mediterranean.

We’ll also talk about a Belgian start-up called United Pepper that’s trying to create a line of greener, fairer electronics products, things like webcams made from recycled materials, and put together in Vietnamese factories that reportedly adhere to fair trade guidelines. In the course of the discussion, we hear from Traidcraft, a group that evaluates supply chains based on fair trade principles. We’ll also talk to Greenpeace, who regularly creates a Guide to Greener Electronics.

We’ll also move the discussion of “green electronics” over to the United States, and have a chat with Sarah O’Brien, of the Green Electronics Council. Sarah’s answering your questions over in our World Science Forum for the next couple of weeks, so be sure to stop by and leave your questions or comments!

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
(Photo: Hessam M. Armandehi)

Listen to our story about the new pulsar discovery by Einstein@Home.

Learn how scientists are enlisting a global network of citizens – and their computers – to make discoveries in space. Join our conversation with physicists Bruce Allen (left, in photo) and Benjamin Knispel (right). They’re both at the Max Planck Institute of Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany, and they run the  Einstein@Home project. They are also our guests in this Science Forum discussion.

The project is using the computers of some 250,000 volunteers from 192 countries to look for gravitational waves and new astronomical objects. Data from various detectors and telescopes are fed into the volunteers’ computers to be analyzed for signals from space.

In a study published in the journal Science this week, the scientists report Einstein@Home’s first discovery – a pulsar, some 17,000 light years from Earth. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars (leftover cores of dead giant stars). They spin rapidly and emit pulses of electromagnetic radiation. Those radio waves are picked up by radio telescopes like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which was used in this study.

How it All Began: Nearly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. He proposed that massive stars and black holes produce these waves as they move through space. But scientists are still trying to detect gravitational waves.

Einstein@Home began in 2005 when scientists realized that gravitational wave detectors in Italy, Germany and the U.S were generating more data than could possibly be analyzed by the computers available to researchers. So Bruce Allen decided to enlist the help of regular citizens. And in 2007, he extended the project to detect celestial bodies like pulsars.

Allen and Knispel are taking your questions until August 26. Come join the conversation. It’s just to the right.

• Have you volunteered your time or your computer to help a research project? What motivated you to sign up?
• Might “volunteer computing” break down barriers between scientists and the lay public? Is this a good thing?
• Can you think of any other scientific projects that might benefit from a global network of personal computers?

Volunteer your computer.  Here are some popular citizen science projects you can sign up for:

• Rosetta@Home – studies the shapes of proteins
• SETI@Home – looks for signs of intelligent life in space
• Africa@Home – helps with humanitarian projects in Africa
• ClimatePrediction.net – analyzes models of the Earth’s climate
• Or find a host of other citizen science projects–computing and otherwise–at ScienceForCitizens.net.

This week: We’re talking about food and food crops in today’s show. You’ll hear about Germany’s schizophrenic attitude towards developing transgenic food crops. Then, journalist Michael Pollan talks about the growing need to regulate the organic food industry. Also, more about an ancient brown shoe discovered in Armenia. And a paleoecologist talks about her favorite music.

GM Foods in Europe: You’ve heard us talk about the pros and cons of GM foods before. In today’s show we look into how the field of research on so-called transgenic crops is playing out in Europe. Many European governments have banned the commercial use of almost all genetically engineered crops.  Even attempts to grow these crops experimentally are often stopped by public protests and civil disobedience.  That’s especially true in Germany.  Yet Germany remains home to some of the world’s leading scientists in the field.
Report by: David Hecht
Our Science Forum discussion with Lisa Weasel about whether transgenic food can feed the world’s hungry.
Recent articles about GM crops in Germany, from Spiegel: GM potatoes approved, then, Other GM potatoes rejected.

Regulating the Organic Food Market: The organic label means the food you’re buying is free of chemicals, and that it was grown with respect for the environment. But the label may not be a guarantee. The U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) just banned a leading American inspector of American foods in China. The Department said a Nebraska-based organization was using Chinese government employees to inspect government-controlled farms. Journalist and author Michael Pollan explains how the need for enforcement of organic food regulations has grown with the industry.
Guest: Michael Pollan
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program
An essay on organic food and world hunger from Foreign Policy
Seed magazine’s “Food Fight” series

Ancient Brown Shoe: You may have heard about the discovery of the oldest known shoe in Armenia this past week. The shoe belonged to someone who lived almost 6,000 years ago, in the Copper age. In today’s show you’ll hear about the discovery and what scientists know about that time period.
Report by: David Levielle
Guest: Gregory Areshian
The study
New York Times coverage



A. Leather Shoe (Photo: PLoS Journal) B. Map of Location (Illustration: PLoS Journal)

Music in Science: Paleoecologist Jacquelyn Gill studies the interactions between mammoths, mastadons, and vegetation at the end of the last ice age ten thousand years ago. Her favorite lab music isn’t quite that old–but it’s still archaic compared to the state-of-the-art facility where she works at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Song: “Sing a New Song,” by Bennie Kreuger and his Orchestra
Jacquelyn Gill works in the Williams Lab at U.W.-Madison.
Listen to Radio Dismuke

This week: Mediterranean bluefin tuna, being decimated. Watching for swine flu in Africa. Germany leads the way on renewable energy. And some surprising results from a mummy CAT scan. Plus carbs and cardiovascular disease, and genetic links between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Bluefin Tuna Troubles: In the Mediterranean, fishing for bluefin tuna goes back thousands of years. But now, overfishing is taking a severe toll, and the bluefin tuna population is crashing.
Report: By The World’s Gerry Hadden in Barcelona.

Swine Flu in Africa: The World Health Organization has tallied more than 70,000 confirmed cases of swine flu worldwide. Of those, fewer than ten are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even so, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worries that Africa could be hit hard by the pandemic. Experts say crowded slums on the continent could serve as perfect places for the spread of H1N1.
Report: By The World’s Andrea Crossan in Nairobi, Kenya.

An interactive worldwide swine flu map from the WHO

Solar Energy in East Germany: A decade ago, Germany’s government decided to focus on creating new sources of clean, renewable energy — and putting people to work in these new industries. The strategy succeeded. It helped create a solar power industry and revive a depressed region of the former East Germany. This story is the first installment in a five-part series on how Europe is confronting the challenge of climate change.
Report: By Kathleen Schalch in Frankfurt an Oder, Germany.

German Renewable Energy Federation

Mummies Get CAT Scans: Researchers in New York gave CAT scans to four mummies from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The scans revealed a few surprises, including the fact that one mummy long thought to be a woman is actually a man.
Report: By The World’s Lisa Mullins.

Mummy photos from the Brooklyn Museum

David’s favorite science stories of the week (Elsa’s away, having fun — we hope — in Bulgaria):

• New details on how some carbohydrates can damage the cardiovascular system
• A large international schizophrenia study finds genetic evidence that the disease has an immune component, and comes up with a genetic link to bipolar disorder.

Music:
Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, by World Party
Way Down Now, by World Party

All over the world, disease and habitat destruction have caused honey bee numbers to plummet. Bees are crucial because they pollinate 80 percent of our fruit and vegetable crops. This week’s podcast begins with a story from Frankfurt, Germany, about how urban apiculture may give the bees a boost.

A bigger environmental problem is climate change. Everyone thinks of cars as a key contributor to global warming, but buildings are responsible for about half the total greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption around the world. One group of architects wants to change that. They call themselves Architecture 2030. By 2030, they want to design buildings that use no fossil fuels.

Last week, an earthquake hit central Italy, killing almost 300 people. One Italian scientist, Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, predicted the earthquake on the basis of increased radon levels. Nano Seeber, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, talks about the difficulties in predicting earthquakes. Keep an eye on other earthquakes around the world at the USGS Earthquake Center.

Also this week: chimpanzees exchange meat for sex; some birds can tell where you’re looking; and researchers propose a clever new way to stop malaria by killing only old mosquitoes (see the original research paper).

Music:
Slim Harpo, I’m a King Bee
The Hives, A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridors